All Collections

The Arizona Geospatial Data and Maps is the successor to the Arizona Electronic Atlas. This new site provides geospatial data to download and simple prepared maps you can view, save, or print. You will find all of the geospatial data you previously could download on the Arizona Electronic Atlas and the Arizona Historic Census GeoDatabase plus additional data not previously available.

The Arizona Index cites the location of information in mostly “grey” (little known) literature resources related to Arizoniana. The documents cited are in the University of Arizona Libraries collections, but other libraries in the Arizona may have some of these publications also. The index was compiled by librarians on the University Library’s reference staff over a forty year period, from 1950-1990. Most of the citations are to periodical articles, but a few pamphlets, a small number of U.S. government publications, and analytics for more than eighty books are also included.

Coral Way Elementary School in Dade County, Florida, is considered to be the first public school bilingual bicultural education program for both English and Spanish speakers in the United States. It began as a way to accommodate the thousands of children of Cuban refugee families that streamed into southern Florida at the time of and just after the Castro’s Cuban revolution of 1959 and was subsidized by authorities.

Da Afghanistan Kalanay also known as the Salnamah-i Afghanistan is an almanac and yearbook published by the Government of Afghanistan from 1932-1990 (1311-1369). Each volume covers political and economic history and activities of the country. Text are mostly in Dari/Persian and Pashto languages. Some issues have added title and some notes in English or French.

The archaeological research and collections of ASM provide the 'prehistory' before written accounts. Documentary Relations of the Southwest (DRSW) provides the research tools and finding aids to the written record that began with the arrival of the Spanish explorers in the 1530's. The 1,500 microfilm reels of documents, many of them collected by the Jesuit Historical Institute, include the diaries of explorers and reports of missionaries and soldiers.

The Empire Ranch Collection presents digital surrogates of various documents, photographs, and maps located in Special Collections at the University of Arizona Libraries which chronicle the early years of one of Southern Arizona's largest cattle ranches. The pioneering effort to build the Empire Ranch and Cattle Company got underway in 1876 when Walter Vail arrived in Tucson. The Empire Ranch located about 50 miles southeast of Tucson is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. This collection presents information about the ranch's early years.

The Escárcega family library was built by, Gildardo G. H. Morales Díaz of Apetatitlán, Tlaxcala, México [b. 1899]. Mr. Morales Díaz was a self-taught bibliophile and was a founding member of the Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia. Having survived a tragic loss as a young man during the Mexican Revolution, Mr. Morales Díaz dedicated his life to the study and understanding of Mexican History. With few possessions including books, the family moved to Puebla.

Dr. Homer L. Shantz (1876-1958) was a leading American botanist and former president of the University of Arizona. Dr. Shantz was also a remarkable photographer. He traveled widely, with an emphasis on the American West and Africa, and made documentary photographs wherever he went. Among Dr. Shantz's research interests was photographic documentation of vegetation change. He began focusing on the Arizona-Sonoran desert area intensively in 1931 and continued for about twenty-five years. Also notable in the collection are portraits of Native Americans.

The University of Arizona Libraries (UAL), in partnership with the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU), is collaborating on a digitization project “Preserving and Creating Access to Unique Afghan Records.” The goal of this project is to collect, catalog, digitize, and create metadata in providing access to this unique collection. The collection contains information related to history, social, economic, and cultural heritage of Afghanistan.

This digital collection of books, pamphlets, and serials representing Arizona agricultural history and rural life from the period 1820 and 1945 was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Administered by Cornell University, the grant provided funding for land grant universities in the United States to digitize rare and fragile items from this period. Scholars and Librarians at the University of Arizona identified the materials that were digitized.

This collection contains photographs and documents regarding Raul H. Castro’s life and career. The collection documents his political career including his early legal practice, judgeship, each of his three ambassadorships, campaigning for Jimmy Carter and his tenure as governor of Arizona. The original photographs and documents are part of the Raul H. Castro Papers housed at University of Arizona Libraries Special Collections.